Attorney George Conway lashed Republicans in a scathing op-ed published Saturday, warning them to hold Donald Trump to the same standards they applied to Bill Clinton and take a new rape accusation against the president seriously.
Conway, husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, pointed to Republican furor after retired Arkansas nursing home operator Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of rape, which he denied. Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 23 women, seated Broaddrick in a front row during one of his 2016 campaign debates with Hillary Clinton.
The new accusation against Trump of rape in a Bergdorf dressing room was detailed in a New York magazine piece by renowned advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. That accusation “rests upon a significantly stronger foundation than Broaddrick’s,” Conway argues in his piece in The Washington Post.
While Carroll went public with her accusation, Broaddrick denied for years — including under oath — reports that she had been sexually assaulted by Clinton, Conway notes.
Carroll’s account is also “supported by the sheer number of claims that have now surfaced against Trump ... [including] unwelcome or forcible sexual conduct or assault against them. These claims — all denied by the president — far outnumber the publicized sexual misconduct incidents that involved Clinton, which mostly concerned rumors or allegations of consensual affairs,” he writes. (Conway represented Paula Jones, who accused Clinton of sexual harassment.)
Conway says Carroll’s account of the alleged sexual assault is also supported by Trump’s “depraved” 2005 remarks on an “Access Hollywood” tape that surfaced during his 2016 campaign in which he boasts about how he treats women: “When you’re a star ... you can do anything ... grab them by the pussy.” He also preened that he “just starts kissing women ... I don’t even wait.”
Conway writes: “Whatever else he may have done, Clinton never made a video like that. What Trump described on the video is exactly what Carroll says he did to her.”
Trump has insisted he has “never met this person in my life” — which Conway slammed as another “utterly brazen, easily disprovable Trumpian lie.” Carroll included a photo with her article of Trump with ex-wife Ivana apparently speaking to Carroll at a gala.
Conway concluded: “Republicans or conservatives who promoted Broaddrick’s charges would be hypocritical if they fail to champion Carroll and condemn Trump.”